


amor fati

by thousandhourcloset



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Gen, Mjolnir shenanigans, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Spies & Secret Agents, Time Travel, steve's real superpower is running into dead people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-05-28 05:44:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19387702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thousandhourcloset/pseuds/thousandhourcloset
Summary: Steve goes to Vormir. He runs into several people he didn’t expect to see again.





	1. Chapter 1

Steve hadn’t really known what to expect on Vormir. Clint had very visibly had no interest in the debriefing, and Steve had kept it as short as he could. There was a mountain, some kind of guardian (“red, ugly, floaty, knew who we were.”) The part that really troubled Steve was Clint’s description of waking up with the stone in “some kind of shallow pool that stretched forever”; what did returning the stone mean, exactly? Did he have to find his way to the water? Clint had said that where he had woken had been warm, and filled with a dull orange light, neither of which seemed anything like the mountain Steve was facing.

He decided his best bet was to look for the guardian Clint had described. Hopefully taking the stone hadn’t caused it (him?) to leave or poof out of existence.

Steve looked around for a length of relatively smooth ground to take a running leap. He wasn’t really comfortable with actual flight—Thor’s extremely half-hearted attempts to “give him some lessons” had ended with him falling into the lake while Thor laughed to the point of choking—but he’d figured out how to run-and-jump his way into a glide. He took his first run at the mountain, pushed off the ground, and was promptly buffeted into the side of the mountain by the winds. _Guess I’ll be walking._

He was almost to the summit when he spotted a figure in a dark cloak.

It might’ve been the creature Clint described except it wasn’t floating—Steve could hear its footsteps as it approached him.

"What a day it has been. I am freed from my prison, to find you here, bearing gifts.” The voice was a familiar rasp.

“Oh hell,” said Steve.

Johan Schmidt lunged at him. Steve stepped back and to the side and caught Schmidt’s left shoulder with his right hand, quickly bringing up his other hand to punch Schmidt, hard enough to knock him off balance. He threw the shield before Schmidt recovered, laid him flat on the ground and put Mjolnir on his chest. Schmidt struggled against the hammer.

“So. I hear you’re the guardian of the Soul Stone these days.”

“You’re too late, Captain Rogers. The Stone has already been taken, its new bearer has left, and I am free to pursue—“

“Yeah, great. I’m sure you won’t mind telling me how to return it.” Steve carefully opened the case and pulled out the orange stone. Schmidt stared at the stone. He spoke in an agonized voice, as though the words were being pulled from him. “You need only to choose let go of it, with no expectation of its return.”

“Would’ve been nice to know that before I hiked up here.” Steve mumbled.

"All of that power, thrown away for the life of a killer, a liar, a thief,” spat Schmidt. Steve froze.

"What did you say?"

Schmidt was silent, gazing at Steve with something like...confusion.

"'Thrown away for the life of a killer.’ What did you mean?” _Probably some trick_ , Steve thought. _Don’t let him reel you in_.

Schmidt looked at him, contemptuous. “You are even more determined to squander your power than I could’ve imagined.”

Steve leaned over the hammer, pressing down very slightly as he stared into Schmidt’s eyes. “I’m not asking again.”

"There's always an exchange. A life for the stone. The stone for a life." Schmidt's face didn't move, but Steve could feel that he was seething, and a vindictive curl of satisfaction unfurled in his chest.

"You've been very helpful." Steve said, forcing as much false cheer as he could into the words. He straightened, leaving the hammer on Schmidt’s chest, and threw the stone over the cliff.

Steve heard a dull _thud_ behind him, and saw that Schmidt was up, Mjolnir on the ground. He called the hammer to his hand and it passed right through Schmidt, his body becoming wispy.

"I am bound here once more, Captain Rogers. Our fight will have to wait." Schmidt hissed. Steve lowered the hammer, his heart pounding. He was so wound up that it took him a moment to register that there was someone on the ground behind Schmidt.

She was on hands and knees when he spotted her, but she was already getting to her feet by the time Steve reached her. Her hair was clumped with blood.

"Steve," she said. Her voice cracked, very minutely.

"Hey Nat," he said. He knew not to make the first move to touch her, to hug her. Instead, he sat on one of the larger rocks, and after a moment, she sat next to him.

"I'm guessing you're here because things turned out either very good or very bad." She had a wry smile, one that almost reached her eyes.

He laughed. "Good. Thanos is dead. Again. Long story. We got everyone--"

He stopped himself before he said _back._

On a day about a year and a half after the decimation, after they'd put out the immediate fires and the world was beginning to find a new equilibrium, Steve had dropped by the compound. He had paused outside the room Natasha had staked out for her office, just out of sight. She was scrolling through a list of names and faces on a holo-display. Steve had spent his own share of sleepless nights studying the various websites that collected names of the disappeared, and he didn't think much of it until he noticed a field marked _Date and time of death_.

Databases of the vanished didn't ever include a date, and only a few included the time. Even more glaring was the phrasing--the databases, like the people who obsessively maintained and perused them, tended to avoid the word _death_ , using any one of various euphemisms-- _lost, missing, vanished_. Even the cruder corners of the Internet said _dusted_ rather than _dead._ He noticed the dates were all clustered within a few days, but he didn't put it together until he noticed that below the dates was another line, labeled _Cause._ They flicked by: _Automobile accident, hemorrhage secondary to surgery, aircraft accident, suicide._ People who had died in the chaos following the snap.

They hadn't gotten everyone back. They never would.

"Everyone who vanished is back." he said instead. She fixed him with a steady look. He knew she'd clocked something was wrong; he also knew that she wouldn’t push him on it, yet.

When they’d started working together, Natasha’s skill at reading people—and, more importantly, her lack of reservations about using that skill—had unsettled him. The Natasha he’d first met would’ve pressed him for more information, and wouldn’t have cared much about what emotions she’d have to play to get him to speak more. He was suddenly, acutely aware that at that moment, many miles away, there were versions of themselves taking the first, tentative steps towards trust.

He was also aware that Schmidt was hovering nearby, obviously eavesdropping.

"Let's talk down-slope." Steve said, pointedly ignoring him. "I'm cold up here, which means you must be freezing."

Natasha glanced at Schmidt and then at Steve. "I take it you two know each other?"

"Yes, did you leave your manners in the future, Captain? You don't wish to introduce me to the lady?"

Steve gritted his teeth. "This is Johann Schmidt." He deliberately didn't give Natasha's name, even though _(especially because)_ Clint had said Schmidt had known both of their names.

Natasha blinked. "Zola's records on him were unusually vague, especially about how he got the name Red Skull. I assumed it was just Nazi pissing contest bullshit, wanting to grab more credit for launching Hydra.” She stood and rolled her shoulders, her expression calculatedly casual. “Guess no one else cared enough to connect the dots.”

Steve bit back a laugh as Schmidt turned away, apparently no longer interested in their conversation. He slung Mjolnir across his back, and walked to Natasha’s left, buffering her from the worst of the winds with his shield.

“Not that I’m not glad to see you, but why come here?” she asked

“The Sorcerer Supreme wasn’t so keen on us taking the Time Stone. Bruce managed to talk her into letting us borrow it, on the condition we put them all back when we were done.”

“Her?”

“Apparently Strange is pretty new to it. Anyway, we’re done with them, so,” he held up the suitcase, “putting them back.”

“All of them? By yourself?”

He shrugged. “According to Bruce, it’s safe to do consecutive jumps as long as they’re all further back in time, and since we have pretty good intel about where and when to put them back, it just made sense to do them all in one shot.”

“Any chance that Bruce said anything about jumping forward?”

“Not to, except for the return trip. Something about each moment having one possible past and infinite possible futures. The wrist thingies are anchored to a specific one.” A shadow briefly flickered across her face, but before he could ask, she spoke. “So the hammer is…?”

“Thor brought it from his trip back to Asgard. I’m going to have to put it back, but it's been handy. Schmidt wasn't so friendly when I got here."

"Aw, and he seemed like such a charmer.” They carefully picked their way over a particularly tricky pass. “How is Thor?”

“He’s…better, I think. I don’t think he’s going to stick around, but I don’t think he’s going to hole himself back up, either.”

She hummed a little and he realized what she was fishing for. _No point putting it off._

"We buried Tony yesterday." She closed her eyes for a moment, nodded, and opened them, her grief carefully packed away. Steve thought about Tony saying _Resentment is corrosive, and I hate it_. It wasn’t quite an apology—Tony hadn’t changed _that_ much—but it was closer to forgiveness than he’d thought they would ever get, especially after Thanos. He wondered if Natasha and Tony had a similar moment, during those long brainstorming sessions at the upstate headquarters. He felt a little guilty for not knowing.

“How’s Pepper holding up?”

“She’s putting a brave face on it. Rhodes and Hogan are helping her out. She’ll pull through, I think.” Steve wished he could say more.

“And how are _you_ doing?”

Steve shrugged. Natasha gave him a small smile. They had reached a plateau, and she sat down on one of the rocks. “Well,” she said. “If Bruce says not to jump forward, I guess I have some decisions to make.”

Steve’s heart lurched. Natasha was looking down at her wrist, tapping at the screen, her expression shuttered.

"If you need more particles, I have spares. With Pym back we were able to ration them a little less." This wasn't quite a lie. He and Bruce had agreed that with only one person returning the stones, it was safest to plan for a separate jump for each one, especially with how tight the timing would be on Morag. Steve had left with nine vials--one for each stone, two to be placed back in Pym's lab in 1970, and one for his return trip. He didn't need that last one, and Natasha didn't know about his and Tony's detour. She'd think that he had more than enough.

“It's not the particles." She held up her wrist, the vial of particles still safely strapped to it. “My return time is set to the morning we left for the stones, Steve. If I go back there, it creates a new timeline with a new series of events. If what Strange told Tony was true, we don’t win in that future.” She took in a shaky breath. When she spoke again, her voice was low and controlled. “I have enough for one more jump. Rocket and Danvers have told me enough about what's out here. It's a big galaxy, and I know where I can go to start a new life without raising too many questions. I’ll lay low until it’s over."

"Sounds like a lonely way to live."

She shrugged. "For a while. But it's not forever. For you, it’ll be like I was barely gone at all.”

“If you survive nine years and find a way back to Earth.”

“What, you don’t believe in me?”

"Natasha."

"Surviving is what I do, Steve. It's like shooting arrows for Clint, or running into dead people for you.”

"They need you," he said. "These next few years, they're going to be tough. We brought everyone back, but not to the world they left."

“There's no one who understands that better than you."

"That's how I know they need you.” He stepped closer to her, cautiously. Her jaw was set in a way that made him uneasy. “Please.”

"I've won this fight once today. I'll fight it again and I'll win."

"This is my choice." He slipped the device off of his wrist. One moment, he was laying it in her hand. The next, he felt every muscle in his body shudder. He recovered enough to control his fall to one knee, but the tasing had left him breathless. She knocked him to the ground easily, pinned his wrist above his head

“That was dirty,” he gasped. She rolled her eyes.

“You’re looking for an excuse to run. I’d rather you just tell me why, but I’m fully ready to send you back now and dedicate the next nine years to making sure I’m there to tell Bruce to sit on you the moment you get back.”

Well, what choice did that leave him?

“I failed, Nat. I didn’t stop Hydra. For a while, with the team, it seemed like it might get better, but I broke that, too. And when Thanos—when the world was counting on us, we couldn’t—“ he inhaled harshly, _why_ was it so hard to breathe? Natasha must have noticed, because she let go of his wrists to guide him to a sitting position, though she stayed perched on his knees.

“So you’re going to go and exile yourself to 2012 as some kind of punishment?” She furrowed her brow.

He laughed, a little hysterically. “No—it’s—we went back further. Me and Tony. There was a problem getting the Tesseract. We went back to 1970. Took more vials from Pym’s lab, too. I saw Peggy there. And Howard.” The words seemed to tear at his throat as he spoke them, as though they were slightly too large, and jagged. “I even thought—if I had one left, I could go back, back further—“ Natasha sighed and pulled his head forward.

“Breathe, Steve. In-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four, out-two-three-four.” She talked him through several cycles, rubbing up and down his spine.

When he could speak again, he looked up, meeting her eyes. “If I could go back with what I know now, it could be different. Bucky. Hydra, SHIELD. Tony’s parents.” _The Red Room_ , he did not say aloud.

“You think you’d fix all of that.”

“I could try.”

“Barnes have anything to say about this plan? Or Sam?”

“They didn’t have to know. It’s—they know this is risky, that there’s a chance I wouldn’t make it back. We said our goodbyes. It would look like an accident.” She was staring at him with an expression halfway between concern and horror.

“Well, for one, I doubt Barnes fell for that, and for another, what gives you the goddamn right, Steve?” The unveiled anger in her voice was startling.

“ _Excuse_ me?” he said, partly in shock and partly in a mirroring anger that he didn’t quite understand but that felt as though it sprung from a very deep well.

“Sam and Wanda, they went _on the run_ for you, Steve. You’re going to let them think god-knows-what happened to you?”

“You know how many died when planes went down after Thanos. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t take it all back, if you didn’t have the chance.” _Don’t pretend you haven’t spent the last five years obsessed with trying._

“You don’t have the chance,” she said flatly. “Those aren’t our world.”

“Their futures still count.”

“You can spend a long time trying to outrun your mistakes,” she said, and now she sounded tired rather than angry. “Sooner or later, you learn all you can do is try to balance out your regrets.”

“This isn’t about that,” he said, frustrated. “How many people had to die while Hydra damn near took over the world? I’m supposed to let that happen, because we suffered through it?”

“We suffered through it together.”

“Did that help you?” he said. “I talked to a lot of people trying get through it together, and I don’t feel like it did a damn thing.”

“Maybe you underestimate yourself.”

“And maybe I’d do more good somewhere else.” 

“What about your past self? Are you just going to leave him at the bottom of the sea?”

“What does--“ he stopped mid-retort.

“Steve?”

“I think there might be another way for you to get back.”

\--

Natasha let him up after he explained, though she insisted on holding both of the wrist-computers and programming in the coordinates to Morag herself. He didn’t argue, though it bothered him that she would think he’d try to escape before replacing all the stones.

They arrived well before Nebula and Rhodes, in order to give them plenty of time to scout the temple. They took cover inside, away from the main path and waited. They pointedly did not discuss the argument they’d had on Vormir. They talked about safe subjects; he did his best to re-enact Rocket’s debriefing to her great amusement. She asked him about his journey to New York, including his run-ins with Rumlow, Sitwell, and his former self.

He was glad not to be alone.

Things moved very quickly once Quill, followed closely by Rhodes and Nebula, showed up. Nebula, with her perfect memory, gave very detailed debriefs and the one Steve had received from her yesterday had been no exception. Steve still wasn’t prepared when, a split-second after Rhodes jumped away, he heard Nebula scream. He and Natasha crept towards the central chamber. Nebula was shaking, her eye implant projecting jumpy, holographic figures. Steve wasn’t sure Nebula was even conscious, let alone in any condition to notice him and Natasha, but they were careful to avoid her line of sight.

Steve lobbed the orb into the cage of light. There was a faint hum as it passed through the beams, bobbing up and down a bit as it floated above the pillar.

He surveyed the room. Natasha was standing guard near the entrance to the central chamber. Nebula had stopped screaming, but her whole body was trembling as she stared at nothing, apparently unconscious. Steve looked away, which left him staring at Quill, about ten feet away from the doorway.

“I think we should help him.” Steve said. The layer of water was noticeably deeper than it had been when they’d first entered the ruins. “At least get him out of here.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“This timeline is already 10 kinds of different,” Steve pointed out. “And it’s kind of our fault that he got conked in the first place.”

“How do we know moving him doesn’t somehow cause Thanos not to find Nebula?”

“Maybe we don’t.” He gave her his best Captain-America-Wants-You-To-Do-The-Right-Thing look.

“That doesn’t work on me,” she said, but she moved to lift Quill’s legs. Steve took his arms and they shuttled him out of the cave mouth, and to an out-of-the-way spot on higher ground. His breathing seemed okay, and according to Rocket he’d survived the full force of the Power Stone (“because his dad was a planet, until we blew him up”), so hopefully he would just sleep it off.

There was a rumble in the distance, and Steve looked up from Quill. “There’s your ride,” he said, watching the ship descend.

Nebula’s body emerged from the cave in a ray of light. He ran to follow it, Natasha close behind.

The ship touched down, and a hatch opened. Nebula floated towards it. Steve sped up to reach it before it closed. It was about 3 feet above him. He leapt up, using the hammer to propel him up until he landed on his feet. Luckily, no one was in the airlock; the door to the ship interior hissed open and Nebula’s body continued on, out of sight. Steve wedged the hatch open with one hand, and reached for Natasha’s hand with the other, pulling her up and through.

He looked around. “Well, it’d be nice if there was more cover in here—“

She fired a shot from her wrist, but this time he was prepared. He raised Mjolnir and the hammer drank in the electricity. He leapt off the ground towards one of the walls, pushed off of it, intending to use the hammer to propel away from her. Instead, the hammer suddenly changed direction, pushing him back towards Natasha before jumping from his hand.

She grabbed the hammer out of the air with her left hand, electricity crackling around her arms and shoulders as she tased him again, harder this time. He fell to the ground, unable to do anything but watch as she snatched up the suitcase, and gently took the wrist computer from his arm, strapping it to her own wrist.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” she said, and then she was gone.

As soon as he could move again, he sat up and leaned against a nearby bulkhead. Part of him wanted to scream, see who or what would come running and take out his frustrations on them. But his better judgment knew that risked changing too much, too close to the end, and he was so tired. _You can’t punch your way out of this one._

He should’ve known. She had asked too many questions about what he’d seen in New York; too much about debriefing the team; too much about what his plan was, where and when he was planning to jump to for each stone. He had assumed it was just to avoid the fight about which of them would go back.

She’d won that one handily, just as she said she would.

He moved into an alert crouch, shield in front of him and back to the wall, and waited.

\---

Steve had left to return the stones two days after the battle, which meant that he had to while away about 56 hours on the compound without being discovered. The early spring nights were slightly too cold to comfortably sleep rough, and it seemed like everyone else had suffered the same insomnia he had after the battle with Thanos. He’d known how to avoid himself, but he had close calls with Bucky, Nebula, and _twice_ with Wanda, just in the first night. The second night was a little easier; it was the night after Tony’s funeral, and a lot of people had left to reunite with loved ones rather than bunking another night on the Quinjet.

It seemed like Steve had just managed to doze off when he felt Bruce’s footsteps. He crept closer to the clearing where the quantum tunnel was set up.

It was still profoundly disorienting to watch himself. He couldn’t see Bucky’s face, but he could hear him. He kept thinking of Natasha’s remark about Bucky not falling for Steve’s casual goodbye.

His past self blinked away. A second later, Natasha appeared on the platform. Her hair was different, short and red.

“Um,” Bruce said at the same time that Sam said “Nat?”

“Hey stranger,” Natasha said, moving to hug Sam.

Steve decided this was as good a dramatic entrance as any. “There was a slight change of plans,” he said, stepping into the clearing. Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. Bucky turned towards his voice, and Steve had just enough time to register the unguarded emotion on Bucky’s face before he was wrapped in a hug.

“For a second there, I didn’t think you were coming back.” Bucky murmured in his ear, and Steve winced.

“Glad to be back.”

By the time they broke away, Natasha was peering through the trees in the direction of the compound. “Really trashed the place, huh?”

“T’Challa’s offered us some working space until we figure out something permanent. We just need to pack this in and go,” said Bruce. “Oh, Steve, do you have the—“ Natasha handed Bruce both of the wrist devices. Bruce stared down at them, easily cradled in one of his large hands. “ _What_ —“

“Later,” said Natasha. “I think Steve and I both need some combination of lunch, a nap, and a shower first.”

The five of them were able to disassemble the platform in just over an hour, at which point Bruce scooped up the control panel, generators and all. “I can deal with it later on,” he said. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”

The ride to Wakanda was quiet. Natasha’s head was tipped back and her eyes were closed, but Steve was pretty sure she wasn’t actually asleep, and he thought Sam and Bucky could probably tell too, but they settled into a game of gin, quiet except for whispered trash-talk. Steve declined their offer to be dealt in. He closed his own eyes, more for solitude than an actual attempt to sleep.

He could faintly hear the radio chatter from the cockpit; if he concentrated, he probably could’ve listened in on Bruce and Okoye’s conversation, but he let it stay an indistinct counterpoint to the melody of Sam and Bucky’s voices. In spite of his intentions, he fell asleep.

He woke to Bucky’s hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” said Bucky.

“Hey.”

“You wanna go sleep some more? I’ll catch up with you, I’m just going to help Dr. Banner.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah. I’ll see you soon.”

He and Natasha headed in the direction of the barracks, while Sam, Bruce, and Bucky unloaded the jet.

“New hair?” he said.

“New old hair. I was trying to blend in a little better in 2012.” She frowned. “I dyed my hair in a witch’s bathroom and that’s nowhere close to the weirdest thing that’s happened today.”

“You had to use dye? There’s not…magic?”

“I’d just met her, Steve. Hair is a very intimate thing.”

“How long have you known you could wield Mjolnir?”

“I didn’t. I gambled that dying to bring back half the life in the universe would give me a day pass.”

“That…makes sense.” He scrubbed at his face with one hand. “I’m going to go and sleep in an actual bed. You should do the same.”

“Steve, wait.” She touched his arm. “I really am sorry I tricked you. And if you still really want to go back, I’ll help you. But do me a favor and give living in the present a try, Steve. You can stay here while we rebuild or you can go sail around the world in a catamaran with Barnes. Just try.”

Steve dropped his head. “Yeah. I will.”

“Thank you.” Her lips quirked into a half-smile. “It can only get better, right?”

“Well, now you’ve jinxed it,” he said. She snorted and lightly cuffed him on the shoulder.

“Sailing sounds nice. I mean, I’ve never actually learned how, but a vacation sounds nice. You in? Sam would be in, maybe Wanda. Do the non-fugitive world tour.”

“I think it’s going to be a pretty busy couple years coming up,” she said, but she was smiling a little too much for the words to be believable.

“I mean it’d be, you know, the working kind of vacation. I don’t think any of us are too good at sitting still.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” she said. “Go sleep, Steve, you look exhausted.”

“It’s good to have you back, Nat.”


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha inhaled, smelled sunlight and water and breeze. She was in a bedroom, one window open over a glistening lake.

Jane Foster was on the bed, eyes closed, but she started as Natasha approached the bed. Natasha braced herself to fight, but Foster just blinked drowsily at her.

“You’re her. From the attack on New York.” Foster squinted at Natasha. “Your hair’s different.”

“I get that a lot.”

“Darcy’s going to _flip_ when I tell her I met you.” Foster’s eyes widened. “I mean, I’m not going to tell anyone anything.” Natasha suppressed a smile. “This doesn’t feel like a dream. But it has to be, right? I don’t—why would you be here?” Foster frowned, then buried her head in her hands. “I feel better. Why do I feel better?” She looked up at Natasha. “Was there a rabbit?”

Natasha knelt by the bed, at eye-level with Foster. “Jane, I know everything’s confusing right now. But it’ll be okay. Do you trust me?”

Foster’s eyes darted to the hammer in Natasha’s hand. “Yes,” she whispered.

“It’ll be okay.” Natasha repeated. “Just go back to sleep.” Foster nodded and closed her eyes.

Natasha set the case on the floor and opened it, blocking Foster’s line of sight with her own body. It opened, revealing a syringe filled with a roiling red fluid and a vial of the Pym particles, and…nothing else. There were no obvious false bottoms or hidden compartments, but on closer inspection, there was a small recessed square near the latch. She looked at the wrist computer.

>STEALTH FEATURES ACTIVE. BRIEFCASE QUANTUM SIGNATURE TUNED TO: ASGARD, 2013. 


_Tony_ , she thought, with a tide of fondness and sorrow. She withdrew the syringe, closed the briefcase, tapped at the computer.

>STEALTH FEATURES ACTIVE. BRIEFCASE QUANTUM SIGNATURE TUNED TO: NEW YORK, 2012. 


When she opened the case again, the Time Stone and the Mind Stone, set back into the scepter, were there. She glanced back at Foster, who was breathing steadily. The safest thing would be to use the scepter, make her forget ever seeing Natasha.

On the other hand, she didn’t really know how to use the scepter; there was the chance it could backfire badly, wipe Foster’s memory entirely or give her powers or attract the wrong kind of attention.

Natasha knew she was looking for a rationalization; she didn’t like the idea of messing around in Foster’s head, especially when it seemed like the worst thing that would happen is she’d tell her friend about a weird dream she’d had.

Still, just because she’d been looking for the rationalization didn’t mean it was _wrong_. She put the scepter back in the case and injected Foster with the Ether. Foster whimpered softly, but didn’t wake.

Natasha placed the hammer near the open window, which would hopefully minimize any damage if ( _when_ ) Thor called it from outside. She allowed herself ten seconds to look over the view of Asgard, feeling the cool wind on her face, before she moved on.

\--

The brownstone’s door swung open before Natasha could knock.

“Natasha Romanoff,” said the Sorcerer Supreme. “Please come in.”

“Thank you,” said Natasha. The woman led her to a small table, with coffee set out at two chairs. The chairs reminded Natasha very much of the slightly-too-low, old wood chairs around the Bartons’ kitchen table. A taste of the coffee furthered her suspicion that the resemblance was not entirely coincidence; it tasted exactly like it had at the small cafe near her cover house in Turkey, back when she was still running missions for the Red Room. A copper cevze was the first luxury she’d allowed herself after she defected to SHIELD, when she was trying to teach herself what it meant to be a person with her own home, her own possessions and preferences.

Natasha set the case on the table and opened it. The Sorcerer waved her hand above the case, and the Time Stone levitated out. She hovered it into the pendant around her neck, and the gold latticework engulfed the stone.

“You’ve had quite the day,” the Sorcerer said, sounding faintly amused. “Thank you for returning the stone.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t heard _why_ it’s important to return them.”

“The Infinity Stones are the support structure of reality. They keep the universe…” The Sorcerer tilted her head, looking for the right word. “Healthy.”

“What does that mean for a timeline that has lost all of its stones?”

The Sorcerer looked grave. “It’s unprecedented. Supposing that world did not immediately unravel, there could be…incursions. Possibly even destabilizing effects on the rest of the multiverse.”

“Great.”

“It’s an unenviable task you face, but not an insurmountable one. Your world has continued on for 5 years already; I wouldn’t have believed that possible.”

Natasha swirled the coffee grounds in her cup. “There were some…complications in retrieving the stones from here. In the original—“ The Sorcerer raised an eyebrow at her. “In my timeline, Asgard took custody of the Space Stone and Loki. Loki’s escaped with the Stone now. Is that going to be an issue?”

“Minor timeline alterations are more common than you might think. Part of my duties are to prevent certain kinds of changes.” The Sorcerer gave Natasha what might have been a smile, and might have just been bared teeth. “Don’t try to assassinate anyone while you’re here.”

“Noted.”

“But I believe what you’re describing is less critical. The stone has remained part of this timeline. The future remains full of possibilities, dependent on the free will of many people. Some of my predecessors might have opted to intervene, but that comes with its own risks.”

Natasha didn’t want to ask, but it would’ve been unfair to Steve not to. “What about if someone from the future came here and couldn’t return to their own time?”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” The Sorcerer asked. Natasha shrugged. “It’s uncommon, but not unheard of. I would try to make contact with them to get a sense of their intentions, and offer my aid in returning them or helping them settle in unobtrusively.”

“Doesn’t seem so bad.”

“I will warn you that those who strand themselves intentionally rarely gain the satisfaction they seek in revising the past. Often, the wisdom to make a decision comes to us after we’ve already made it.”

Natasha nodded. “You’ve been very generous already,” she began. “If I may impose—“

“You’ll find what you need in the bathroom.” The Sorcerer said.

“Thank you.”

\--

This time the jump landed her in a slightly battered-looking emergency stairwell. She went down a half-flight and slowly opened the door. Steve—this time’s Steve—was out cold on the floor.

 _Good_. She could just leave the scepter nearby, and--

“Romanoff!” Jasper Sitwell was jogging up to her. “Did you recover the Scepter?” He was looking at the case in her hand. Steve groaned.

Natasha thought about Wanda, locked in a dungeon and experimented on for months. She thought about Steve saying _those futures still matter_.

He’d been rationalizing, but that did not mean he’d been wrong.

“It’s empty,” she said. Sitwell eyed her suspiciously. “See for yourself.” She set it down, and hoped she was right about what Tony would’ve meant by “STEALTH FEATURES ACTIVE.” Sitwell opened it and cursed. He put his hand to his ear. “Strike Team, we need all hands back at the tower.”

“Is Fury still on the carrier?”

“He’s set up a command station in the penthouse.”

“I can go talk to him, if you want to rendezvous with the Strike Team about setting up a net,” she said. Sitwell nodded, obviously glad to have the out. He moved away, presumably to coordinate the Hydra response.

“I’ll go with you,” Steve offered. He was sitting up now.

“You should get checked out by medical.” Natasha said.

“I’m fine.” Steve said. “Agent Romanoff—I don’t mean any offense, but Loki was able to kick the tar out of me one on one. I’d feel better if you weren’t going alone.”

“How about if you see a doctor after?”

“You’ve got a deal.”

They took the elevator. The doors closed and Steve visibly slumped.

“Are you okay?”

Steve barked a short laugh. “It’s nothing, just—thinking about something Loki said. Doesn’t matter. God of lies, right?” He looked at the ceiling of the elevator, obviously trying not to meet her eyes.

“Most of the time, the truth delivered the right way is better manipulation than a lie.”

“You sound like you speak from experience.”

The Natasha Romanoff of 2012 would’ve said something coy, played it off as a joke. “Yes. On both sides of the equation.”

The elevator opened. Maria Hill was sitting on the edge of a chaise longue, an array of communications equipment sprawled on the coffee table in front of her. She looked up at them. “Nick’s in the office.” She jerked her head towards a door on the other side of the room.

“Thanks,” said Natasha. She nodded at Steve. “He should see a doctor.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Natasha knocked. The electronic door lock clicked.

“Come in!” Nick bellowed.

Natasha had been prepared for being confronted by Steve, Hill, Clint, even herself; she’d been ready to fight, even to use the scepter, if necessary. She had not been prepared for seeing Nick again.

The last time she’d seen him was shortly after going on the run. He’d appeared at the safe house in Ljubljana, to deliver the offer of immunity for Clint and Scott. Neither had wanted to take it; Natasha had expected that from Clint, but was a little surprised how vehement Scott had been about how he “couldn’t just abandon Captain Fucking America.” It’d taken hours of her and Nick arguing them down.

Even without further contact, there was comfort knowing he was out there, looking out for them. And then he’d been lost in the snap, and she’d found herself running what was left of the Avengers, and rarely a week passed when she didn’t think _I wish I could talk to Nick about this._

“Agent Romanoff?” he asked. She’d been staring at him.

She put the case on the table, and withdrew the scepter. She laid it down on the desk.

“You need to send this off-world.”

“Leaving aside the part where that’s _not_ your decision, why do you think so?” Nick was fond of saying that he wasn’t interested in “any opinion you aren’t willing to fight for.”

“We’d be putting ourselves in the same situation that brought Loki here. He’s not going to be the last person who sees it as an opportunity to seize power.”

“We have channels to protect against that.”

“The same channels that were ready to blow New York off the planet? It needs to be somewhere safe. With someone who’s prepared for whatever threats we don’t know about.”

Nick’s gaze bored into her. “And who might that be, Agent Romanoff?”

“I don’t know. It’s my first time at the alien rodeo, but I was hoping it might not be yours.” _Come on, Nick._

He leaned back in his chair. “I wouldn’t have expected you to argue for giving up control of something this dangerous.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You expected I’d argue for a shadowy government agency playing with mind control technology?”

Nick chuckled “I’ll consider your advice, Agent Romanoff.” She knew that was the most she was going to get from him. She nodded and stepped back into the main penthouse room.

Hill and Steve were gone. Natasha stepped into the bathroom, figuring it was the least likely to be surveilled, and made her jump.

\--

It was disorienting to be in Camp Lehigh with so many people around. The portraits in the entrance hall were still of Peggy Carter and Howard Stark, though paradoxically enough they were older in these than they had been inter portraits of 2014. These were obviously intended to be for recognizing the current Director and Head of R&D, rather than a memorial. Arnim Zola was not yet down in the hidden basement; in 1970 he was still flesh and blood. Natasha wondered if she’d see him, and how hard it would be to stick to the Sorcerer Supreme’s warning against assassinations if she did.

Howard Stark had left early, giving instructions not to be interrupted unless there was a dire emergency and his assistants had jumped at the rare chance to leave during daylight, leaving the lab deserted. Natasha sat at a desk in the darkest corner of the room, with a map, a typewriter, and a small pot of acrid-smelling correction fluid. She worked quickly.

Pym’s lab was harder to infiltrate; he was still working, and seemed disinclined to leave for any reason. She waited for close to an hour before he stomped out and in the direction of the archives, giving her a window to slip in.

She went to Carter’s office last. In a drawer, she found a worn paper menu for a diner in the nearby base town. She studied the map, then wrote a time. She tucked the last paper into the menu, and replaced it in the desk.

It was almost 5 now, and she followed a crowd of civilian workers and off-duty soldiers out to the transports that would take them into town.

Natasha picked out a booth in the diner in sight of the door. She ordered a cup of coffee and flipped through a newspaper that had been abandoned on a nearby table.

She spotted the first agent about ten minutes before the hour. He sat at the counter, flirting a little too theatrically with the waitress. Two more filtered in, a man and a woman. They took a table near the door; too far to hear anything said in her booth, but close enough to watch and to block off the exit. They were better than the first; the only tells were the slightly odd cut of the woman’s jacket and the tension apparent in the man’s shoulders when he glanced over at his colleague at the counter.

At 6:00 on the dot, Peggy Carter walked in. Natasha continued to sip her coffee, but gave her a little nod when she sat down. Carter studied her through the menu.

“So what’s good here?” Natasha asked, in Russian. The man at the counter choked a bit. Carter looked annoyed, though it wasn’t clear if it was at her subordinate or Natasha

“The pie.” Carter responded, also in Russian. “This is not a good way to maintain any sort of cover, Miss…?”

“Ivanovna. And no worse than your friend over there.” The man did not react, which meant either he didn’t understand Russian or he had gotten substantially better at espionage in the last few seconds.

“It was hard to find reliable people on very short notice.”

“It’s better if word doesn’t get around too much.” The waitress, having escaped from the attentions of the man at the counter, refilled Natasha’s coffee. “Cherry pie, please.” Natasha said, in English.

“Turkey sandwich for me. Thank you, love.” Carter favored the young woman with a genuine smile. Her expression hardened as she turned back to Natasha. “If you’re looking to defect with our assistance, there are certain procedures you’ll need to follow,” she said, this time in English—for the benefit of her escort, Natasha realized.

Natasha inclined her head. “Of course,” she said in English, injecting a bit of accent.

“But you are not here to defect, are you?” Carter said, returning to Russian. Natasha followed her lead.

“No. I have some information for you, and all I ask is that you listen to it and decide how to use it.”

Carter nodded.

“Do you have the sequence of words I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“If you dig into what I tell you, sooner or later, a man will come to kill you. Those words are your best chance at stopping him. Memorize them.” Natasha’s eyes flicked back to the agent at the counter, who was now tucking into a plate of meatloaf. He probably didn’t understand Russian, but that wouldn’t stop him from noticing if she said _Stark_ or _Hydra_. “How is your Morse code?”

“I trained at Bletchley.”

“Good enough, then.” Natasha reached with her right hand under the table and found Carter’s hand, warm and slim. _H-Y-D-R-A—I-N—S-H-I-E-L-D_ , she squeezed.

“How deep?” asked Carter

“I don’t know. Deep.” _Z-O-L-A_. Carter’s mouth tightened.

The waitress returned with their food. Natasha took a bite of pie. It was a little awkward eating while holding hands with a stranger under the table, but as live-drops went, it was downright pleasant. The pie really was good. “I have a few names that I’m fairly sure you can trust.” _S-T-A-R-K_ , a pause, _P-Y-M_.

Carter groaned aloud, and the man at the counter swiveled his entire chair at the noise. She held up a finger and he hastily returned to his food as though nothing had happened. Natasha kind of hoped he was Hydra at this point.

“There’s copies of the same list in places where they will find them. You’ll have to explain what it is. There’s also an altered set of numbers in one of the reports for—“ _S-T-A-R-K_. “They’re coordinates.”

“Coordinates to what?”

“To someone you lost a long time ago.” Carter’s eyes widened. Natasha gave her hand a last squeeze and dropped it. “I should go,” she said in English.

“Wait.” Carter said, also in English. “I knew a woman very like you. She used the name Underwood. She was in Cuba for several years, living a…relatively quiet life. Then there was that whole mess in ‘62, and she’s been in the wind since then.”

“You want to know where she is.” Carter nodded. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

“Do you know if she was from…where you’re from?”

“Maybe. A lot of people are from Volgograd.”

Carter leaned closer. “Do they handcuff little girls to their beds in Volgograd?”

“Only in the bad neighborhoods.” Natasha said dryly. “But yes, I think your friend and I might have that in common.”

“They haven’t stopped.” Carter’s eyes had the same look in them that Steve’s had when he’d been listing off his perceived failures. Natasha very much hoped Carter wasn’t also about to start having a panic attack.

“No. They haven’t.” To her relief, Carter just stood and put some money on the table.

“Maybe there’s something I can do about that. Be safe, Miss Ivanovna.”

“And you, Director.”

**Author's Note:**

> turn your [shitposts](https://twitter.com/kagredon/status/1125460582780432384) into fics [2k19](https://twitter.com/kagredon/status/1125462183041593344)


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